April 11, 2007

Ralph Wardlaw (1779–1853) on Watering Down the Gospel

There is imminent danger of divesting the gospel of some attribute as essential to it as its grace, in order to lessen the aversion of the carnal mind to its provisions; and, by soft and specious sentimentalism, stripping the Almighty of the awful in his character, to give effect to the more attractive; hiding his justice, to recommend his grace; instead of employing the “terrors of the Lord” to persuade men, keeping them out of sight; dwelling much on the love, and little on the light, of God’s moral nature; and by—I know not what to call it—a kind of ultra tenderness, that would fain be more compassionate than He whose compassions are infinite—urging and almost cajoling poor sinners to the belief that God has already pardoned them, when the Bible testimony is, that “God is angry with them every day.”
Ralph Wardlaw, Two Essays (Glasgow: Blackie, Fullarton, & Co. and Wardlaw & Co., 1830), 204.

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